update on Capitol Hill Blue story

[grasswire]

1. CHB's message board administrator says he's going to be away from the board for a few days. (Re-education?)

2. The story has now turned to an attack on Aaron Brown by Conservative News Service and Media Research. (Both VRWC.)

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030710_extra.asp#1

They say that Brown raised the story/rumor four hours after it was retracted.

I suppose we'll see a lot of this now. Ugly rumor hits somewhere; everyone scrambles; anyone who bites on it gets blasted by the VRWC.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. this is to be expected

for historical comparison, this happened in the 1972-3 period leading to Watergate

[Stephanie]

2. Advice from a friend

An activist friend who is a veteran of many political battles, going back to the civil rights movement, posted this on another board and it's worth sharing:

Yes -- expect disinformation games to be played. Remind people of that all the time, The most critical protection you can use is the two source rule, the need for sources to be named, and as people here did -- run the names by google to see if they are what they say they are. You can't be certain unless you critically check.

I'd be careful of one off items coming out of New Zealand -- not because New Zealand is bad, but because their dateline is the first in any day, and thus a good place to plant disinformation in hopes it will race around the net before London or New York wakes up. It is a variation on the theme used during the Clinton years when VRWC stuff was planted in Murdock's London sheets for the purpose of getting it to boomarang back to the US. The more tricks you know about, the more likely you'll find the disinformation and call it for what it is.

[LoZoccolo]

3. wow dang

Where does your friend learn about what to look for in all these kinds of tricks that are used to spread disinformation? It sounds like good stuff to know.

[Stephanie]

4. She's been fighting the good fight for years

She knows from experience.

[grasswire]

5. here's the CNS spank of Aaron Brown

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=\\Commentary\\archive\\200307\\COM20030710d.html

What Did CNN Know and When Did They Know It?
Scott Hogenson

One way in which liberal media bias creeps into network and cable TV news is through innuendo. It raises a question - regardless of truth or fact - but permits the news organization to slip off the hook by claiming it had merely broached an issue and not made a declarative statement.

A fine example of media bias by innuendo was made Wednesday evening by CNN anchor Arron Brown regarding when the Bush administration realized they had relied on forged documents to assert that Iraq was seeking African uranium for a nuclear program.

The White House Monday admitted it was wrong last January when President Bush said in his State of the Union Address that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger, prompting many in the news media to pound away on the question of when the president knew about the error.

It's obviously more egregious for a president to deliberately make a false statement in such an address rather than do so inadvertently and realize the error only after the fact.

So Brown took it upon himself Wednesday night to question whether Bush was aware of the mistake before delivering his State of the Union Address.

Yet in spite of the fact that the original source for this report had retracted, corrected and apologized for the error four hours before Brown and Ensor went on the air, the two still managed to work this bogus rumor into their broadcast.

If Brown and Ensor wanted to knock-down a false rumor, they certainly could have done so with either newscaster simply saying, "That report has been retracted. It's entirely false. There's absolutely nothing to it."

[Old and In the Way]

6. Who better to know smear and innuendo journalism, then those

who are masters at it?

This guy Wilkerson had to have been a real scumbag. The CHB publisher admitted to knowing him for 20 years. Someone who would do this for the Bush team must have scored quite a handsome payday.

Love to get a follow-up interview of this guy and hear his story as to who engineered the set-up.